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The devils get their due
REVIEWS BY GAVIN J. GRANT
Haunted by the attack, Hyde launches a quest to find out where the new species originated—or was manufactured. He runs up against Obligate, a religion-based conglomerate which dominates the country, and Teryl Meade, an American scientist who was once on the cutting edge of genetic experimentation but has now publicly refuted it. Set near the middle of the current century, White Devils extrapolates from current science headlines to envision a world where a new plague ("The Black Flu") has killed one billion people, mostly in the third world. Africa is the playground of transnationals and local warlords and, despite worldwide bans, genetic experiments have transformed the landscape. McAuley, who has a fantastic backlist of novels to his credit, is one of the best in the genre at writing these near-future near-disasters. Infused with incredible energy and suspense, White Devils should please everyone from ecologically minded Kim Stanley Robinson fans to readers of political thrillers by John Le Carré and Frederick Forsyth.
By Paul McAuley Tor, $25.95 448 pages, ISBN 0765307618 A twist of fate
Dutiful is accompanied by FitzChivalry Farseer, whose youth is recounted in the earlier books. Fitz is generally believed to be dead and is posing as one of Dutiful's Royal Guard. The Fool of the title is Fitz's best friend, Lord Golden, and the fate of the world rests on the decisions made by these three men. Fitz knows that the Fool believes he must die on the quest to somehow bring dragons back into the world. Fitz gets the Fool arrested to stop him from accompanying Dutiful's group, but when they arrive at the island of Aslevjal to kill Icefyre, the Fool is waiting for them on the beach. Hobb successfully mixes identity, secrets, betrayals, quests, dragons (and how to make them), war, physical and mental handicaps and exploration in a tale that focuses on what makes us human: facing ourselves, the consequences of our actions, and death. Fool's Fate is reminiscent of Ursula Le Guin's The Other Wind in its treatment and questioning of death and bears comparison to the finest moments of Anne McCaffrey's Pern series. This is a rich, enchanting fantasy from one of today's best practitioners, and those who enjoy it are encouraged to seek out Hobb's earlier work written under the name Megan Lindholm.
By Robin Hobb Bantam Spectra, $24.95 640 pages, ISBN 0553801546 Back to the future
By Robert A. Heinlein Scribner, $25 288 pages, ISBN 074325998X Gavin J. Grant is co-editor of The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, to be published this summer by St. Martin's Press.
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Paul McAuley's White Devils is a near-future thrill ride from the first page to the last. Nicholas Hyde is an aid worker doing forensic post-massacre work in the Congo when his group is attacked—and many are killed—by a previously unknown type of primate.
Robin Hobb's Fool's Fate is the grand and multifaceted conclusion of the Tawny Man trilogy that began with the novels Fool's Errand and Golden Fool. Prince Dutiful of Buck in the Six Duchies has been betrothed to Elliania, matriarch-in-training of the Narwhal Clan of the Out Islands. However, Elliania puts one condition on the marriage: Dutiful must place the head of one of the last two dragons, Icefyre, on her mother's hearth. Dutiful accepts the challenge and sets off on a quest to the north where the dragon is said to be buried deep in ice.
Of note to science fiction fans is the publication of Robert A. Heinlein's long-lost
first novel, For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs. Perhaps
because this was his first novel—or because the ideas here prefigure much of his later work—Heinlein
attempted to destroy all extant copies of it before he died in 1988. Nevertheless, For Us was rediscovered,
leading to the obvious question of whether it can survive the test of time, 65 years after it was written. The answer
depends on the reader. This is not the book for readers new to Heinlein, a grandmaster of science fiction with such
classics as Stranger in a Strange Land to his credit. The plot, such as it is, (a man from 1939 wakes up in a
utopian 2086) is just a frame on which Heinlein hangs his ideas on government, finance, sexual mores, law and privacy.
Perhaps this is best viewed as a book only for true fans, but what a treat it will be for them.